Travis Jensen ’24 shares Jesus through his faith-based apparel companies

Travis Jensen ’24 routinely tripped the circuit breaker in his Arden Village dorm room his sophomore year. “I had my RA on speed dial,” he recalls. “I was using the absolute max wattage in that room, and it was quite the adventure.” With a tiny heat press and his sister’s Cricut vinyl cutting machine, he set up a makeshift station to print T-shirts and hoodies bearing a cross on the left chest and a print of Mount Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, on the sleeve to sell to friends on campus. An accommodating roommate, Matthew Carlsen ’24, went along with the burgeoning enterprise, telling Jensen he simply needed a path among the boxes of inventory to get to his bed. Jensen could work with that!

As demand increased, Jensen moved his setup to Heritage Hall the following year, eventually taking over an unused dorm room above his own. He began adding more apparel colors and design options. By senior year, he had relocated to the basement of a house off campus, where he had a much larger production space with commercial-grade equipment. And by the time he graduated, what started as a single T-shirt sale had grown into two thriving companies.

Now, Jensen is the founder of Travco Christian Streetwear, a rapidly growing faith-based apparel brand sold in three retail stores, all 50 states, and 13 countries. He’s also the owner of Travco Prints, a custom screen printing and embroidery business serving churches, camps, and ministries across the Midwest. The journey—from dorm room to multi-employee operation—was never something he planned. It was something he surrendered to.

Choosing Bethel, listening to God

Jensen grew up in southern Minnesota and was a competitive runner in high school, earning offers from several DII and DIII programs. He chose Bethel, however, after an overnight visit with the cross country team. “The coach loved the Lord, and I could just tell he cared more about us as people than as athletes,” Jensen says. “That made a big difference.”

He ran cross country and track his first year and loved every minute of it. Then, in the middle of his sophomore season, everything changed. “The Lord just made it very clear that I was done running,” Jensen says. “There was no logic to it. I tried to reason through why I was being called out of the sport, but I was lost for a proper explanation. I kept going back and forth, but deep down, I knew I had to obey—even when it didn’t make sense. I knew I was being called somewhere else.” 

So, he quit. For the next week or so, he recalls being confused and disoriented about what he was doing. And then his obedience quickly became the foundation of something new. Jensen received what he describes as a vision from God: a simple cross on a neutral-colored shirt, paired with a graphic of Mount Golgotha. “I had no idea what it meant. Do I need to buy it? Is someone going to be wearing it? I couldn’t find it anywhere on Google. Couldn’t find it on Amazon. But I was like, ‘Why is this shirt weighing on me so hard?’” 

He went home for fall break, bought a T-shirt and, using his sister’s Cricut vinyl cutting machine, made a cross and a mountain vinyl cut out and pressed it on the shirt. He went back to school and started wearing it around campus. “All of sudden, people were asking me where I got it, if I could make one for them, if I had it in other colors,” he says. “I didn’t plan to start a brand, but suddenly things all started to make sense. This is why I was called to leave the sport I loved.” He built a website, started an email list, opened an Instagram account—and his apparel was all over Bethel’s campus.

A business: marketing major and communication studies minor, Jensen says his Bethel studies at the time were equipping him in ways he hadn’t expected. After all, the apparel brand had not been part of his college plan! “I learned how to communicate, how to work with people, and how to sell,” he says. “Classes like group communication, nonverbal communication, and even marketing and sales directly shaped how I run the business and understand human psychology."

In fact, one of his Bethel sales professors even let classmates practice their cold-calling skills by reaching out to real customers for Jensen’s brand. More importantly, Jensen says Bethel gave him space to grow the business organically. “There was a built-in Christian community that supported what I was doing and funded rapid growth,” he says. “If it weren’t for Bethel, the brand would never have taken off the way it did.”

Trusting His provision

As Jensen’s senior year rolled around, his shirts were a staple around campus. By then, he had moved to a house across from Lake Valentine with seven buddies. They took the upstairs and let him have the basement for printing. Orders continued to increase, and Jensen was beginning to get bulk order requests as well. “I was getting calls from people saying, ‘We have a camp coming up, or a baptism weekend, or a retreat. Can you make shirts for us?’” Jensen explains. “I started realizing there’s a really good market for a Christian-based printer that makes apparel in bulk!”

Three months out from graduating, he began handwriting letters to every single camp in Minnesota and calling businesses and churches. He introduced himself as a new printer in the Twin Cities area, and soon after, he was booked out with orders. This gave him a strong pipeline of sales as he stepped fully into entrepreneurship, running both Travco Christian Streetwear and the newly launched Travco Prints full time. But even with momentum on his side, Jensen faced a challenge early on. In July, just months after graduation, he found himself with only one order booked for the entire month. “Everything had been going so well,” he says. “But then it was just silent. And I had to decide—am I going to trust God to provide what he has called me to?”

He dove into Scripture, especially passages about giving and trusting the Lord with your finances. One stood out: Malachi 3, where God invites people to “test” him by tithing and promises to abundantly provide for them in return. “I had never tithed before. But I wrote a check, prayed over it with my family and gave it away in faith, knowing God would provide,” Jensen says. “Within three days, the entire month was absolutely full. Orders came out of nowhere. People I hadn’t talked to in years reached out, along with many churches and businesses I had never heard of. It was unreal.” That moment, he says, became a spiritual anchor. “It taught me that if I trust God and obey, He will take care of everything. When things get rough, I say, ‘Lord, I remember when you took care of me that July. I remember what it felt like when I just had to put my full faith in you and not rely on anything else!’”

Pointing to something bigger

Jensen remains grateful for the ways Bethel helped him find his calling and then equipped him for the work ahead. He also remains close to many of his Bethel friends and professors. As part of his communications minor, Jensen took American Sign Language with Professor Becki Tate. He recently partnered with her to design and print a shirt for the Deaf Converge Missionary Conference, and was a guest in Tate’s class last fall, sharing his faith journey and inspiring current students. You can also now find his apparel in the Bethel Campus Store.

Jensen prints and ships orders nationally out of his production facility in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and is continuing to hire additional staff to meet growing demand. He does still run—usually after 10 p.m.—but most of his time is devoted to work. “I get to give people the best merch they’ve ever received—and do it in a way that points to something bigger,” he says. “I go to bed exhausted, but fulfilled. This is what I’m called to do.”

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